Monday, 16 July 2012

Well we can confidently say that over the last few weeks the weather has not been great, but on Friday 13th July things weren’t looking to bad. Just about the perfect weather to go ringing ospreys. Our three osprey chicks had now become two, as due to the menacing weather we have unfortunately lost our youngest chick.
﻿

Gently does it. Both chicks are carefully loaded into a
bag to be lowered down the tree.

﻿﻿Our chicks were now six weeks old and it was time for them to have their individual leg rings fitted. As we climbed the tree the heavens open, fortunately this was short lived so the chicks didn’t get too wet. Once both chicks were lowered to the ground, Dave Anderson (FCS Conservation Manager) was on hand to show how the leg rings are fitted to some of our volunteers, who had been specially invited as thanks for all the hard work they put in at DML.

Firstly, two leg rings are fitted, a blue plastic one called a Darvic, this year the chicks were fitted with blue ring TM and TN and a metal BTO ring. Both rings will be used in the future to help identify the birds both on migration to West Africa and when they hopefully return to the Trossachs in a few years time. Once this is complete the chicks are weighed and measurements taken and this confirmed that we had a boy and a girl! Because of this the volunteers decided that we should call our chicks Tia Maria and Tony.

﻿﻿

Tia Maria all done, with both leg rings fitted.

﻿﻿ ﻿﻿﻿Tony and Tia Maria will fledge once they are seven weeks old, when they will begin to build up strength before setting off on migration at about 12 weeks old. ﻿
﻿﻿﻿

Friday, 13 July 2012

For the last few weeks we have watched our single Buzzard chick very quickly grow up and also battle with a range of Scottish weather! The chick which was tagged a few weeks ago as Purple/White 29 was one of a two chicks but unfortunately the second chick died only a few days of hatching.

This video clip is the last footage we have of the chick! It looks like Mum is giving it one last clean before it leaves!

We wish the chick Good Luck and will hopefully spot it around the Trossachs soon.

In other news on Friday 13th, we will be fitting the leg rings to our remaining two osprey chicks. This can be viewed live on camera from the David Marshall Lodge Visitor Centre from around 11.30am.

For those of you that don’t know we lost out youngest chick last week, we believe due to the wet weather that we have been experiencing over the last few weeks.

Also, just to let you know that we are currently experiencing problem with live streaming our HD Osprey camera over the web, so for the time being we are bringing you one of our red squirrel feeders. So why not sit back to a cuppa and see if you can spot on the those red fluffy creatures or maybe even a elusive pine marten! It can be viewed at: http://www.forestry.gov.uk/website/forestry.nsf/byunique/infd-8grdef